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Gore Vidal, writer and political figure, dies at 86

Unable to make a living from fiction, at least when identified as “Gore Vidal,” he wrote a trio of mystery novels in the 1950s under the pen name “Edgar Box” and also wrote fiction as “Katherine Everard” and “Cameron Kay.” He became a playwright, too, writing for the theater and television. Paul Newman starred in “The Left-Handed Gun,” a film adaptation of Vidal’s “The Death of Billy the Kid.”

Vidal also worked in Hollywood, writing the script for “Suddenly Last Summer” and adding a subtle homoerotic context to “Ben-Hur.” The author himself later appeared in a documentary about gays in Hollywood, “The Celluloid Closet.”

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Although happy to see and be seen, Vidal saw himself foremost as a man of letters. He wrote a series of acclaimed and provocative historical novels, including “Julian,” “Burr” and “Lincoln.” His 1948 novel “The City and the Pillar” was among the first to feature an openly gay relationship. Fans welcomed his polished, conversational essays or his annual “State of the Union” reports for the liberal weekly “The Nation.”

He once likened Mailer’s views on women to those of Charles Manson’s. (From this the head-butting incident ensued, backstage at “The Dick Cavett Show.”) He derided Buckley, on television, as a “crypto Nazi.” He called The New York Times the “Typhoid Mary of American journalism,” labeled Ronald Reagan “The Acting President” and identified Reagan’s wife, Nancy, as a social climber “born with a silver ladder in her hand.”

In the 1960s, Vidal increased his involvement in politics. In 1960, he was the Democratic candidate for Congress in an upstate New York district, but was defeated despite Eleanor Roosevelt’s active support and a campaign appearance by Truman. In consolation, he noted that he did receive more votes in his district in 1960 than did the man at the top of the Democratic ticket, John F. Kennedy.

Thanks to his friendship with Jacqueline Kennedy, with whom he shared a stepfather, Hugh Auchincloss, he became a supporter and associate of President Kennedy, and wrote a newspaper profile on him soon after his election. With tragic foresight, Vidal called the job of the presidency “literally killing” and worried that “Kennedy may very well not survive.”

Before long, however, he and the Kennedys were estranged, touched off by a personal feud between Vidal and Robert Kennedy apparently sparked by a few too many drinks at a White House party. By 1967, the author was an open critic, portraying the Kennedys as cold and manipulative in the essay “The Holy Family.” Vidal’s politics moved ever to the left and he eventually disdained both major parties as “property” parties - even as he couldn’t help noting that Hillary Clinton had visited him in Ravello.

“Lincoln” stands as his most notable and sympathetic work of historical fiction, vetted and admired by a leading Lincoln biographer, David Herbert Donald, and even cited by the conservative Newt Gingrich as a favorite book. Gingrich’s praise was contrasted by fellow conservative Rep. Michele Bachmann, who alleged she was so put off by Vidal’s “Burr” that she switched party affiliation from Democrat to Republican.

In recent years, Vidal wrote the novel “The Smithsonian Institution” and the nonfiction best sellers “Perpetual War For Perpetual Peace” and “Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta.” A second memoir, “Point to Point Navigation,” came out in 2006. In 2009, “Gore Vidal: Snapshots in History’s Glare” featured pictures of Vidal with Newman, Jagger, Johnny Carson, Jack Nicholson and Bruce Springsteen.

GV sent Norman Mailer a collection of essays. Mailer was frustrated that Vidal had not inscribed the cover page with a note, so he turned to the index to look up his name. There, at the bottom of the page: "Hi, Norm."

Yes, thanks Gore, YOU are great! Ask those who heap praise on your perverted warped self.

From an interview with the GREAT Gore Vidal, at age 83:

John Meroney: "In September, director Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland for leaving the U.S. in 1978 before being sentenced to prison for raping a 13-year-old girl at Jack Nicholson’s house in Hollywood. During the time of the original incident, you were working in the industry, and you and Polanski had a common friend in theater critic and producer Kenneth Tynan. So what’s your take on Polanski, this many years later?"

Gore Vidal: "I really don’t give a ****. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?"